„Once I was away from home, and there was only one record store, and it only had ECM records. So all I did for months was buy ECM records. One record led to another, but it was all happening concurrently, so I was going into extreme free jazz, and into fusion, and all that stuff. I basically had every single Jarrett record, I had the Sun Bear concerts, the 10LP box set. I had everything. But Changes in particular had something about it that was very single-minded. They made Standards Volume One and Volume Two on the same day that they made Changes, and Changes was an improvised record. The way Gary Peacock is sitting on this one note thing, and DeJohnette is driving it really subtly, it reminds me of The Necks before The Necks. It’s got this propulsive thing, and I love that. It’s the explorative playing on top of a driving rhythm. And that’s something that I’ve always loved. I like to explore that in my music, too.“

The German record company ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) is frequently referred to as one of the most important labels for contemporary, classical, and jazz music. As of today their discography counts close to 1400 titles, several hundreds of which have been recorded in Norway. Over the last decades producer Manfred Eicher has been travelling to Oslo to make records with mainly improvising musicians in the studios of recording engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug. From the very start in 1970 this work set a standard in studio production, and many of the releases have become seminal in the history of recorded jazz.

In 2013 ECM deposited their archive of master and production tapes from Rainbow studio with the National Library of Norway for preservation and research purposes. With this as a backdrop, the National Library, in collaboration with the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo (with the NFR Kulver Contemporary Soundspaces project), invite to a research seminar.

The seminar will revolve around the ECM recordings of jazz made in Norway, and will from different perspectives discuss the production and reception of these records. The emphasis will be on the music, the sound, the records, but in this context, equally important, on the different roles of the producer, the contribution of the engineer, and the very process of capturing editions of contemporary music in the recording studio.

We are proud to announce that director and main producer of ECM Manfred Eicher will contribute with his insights at the seminar, as will recording engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug and musician Arild Andersen, in dialogue with professor Hans Weisethaunet and research librarian Ivar Håkon Eikje. In addition two of the leading researchers in jazz studies and recorded music, professor Krin Gabbard and lecturer Peter Elsdon, will share their thoughts on the topic presented: ECM recordings as artistic expression and cultural practice.

Producing The Jazz Facts in the Deutschlandfunk was pure fun. A lot of nice coincidencies: two days ago, I realized that not only Ralph Towner’s TRAVEL GUIDE, but Carla Bley’s TRIOS, too, were recorded in that „radio theatre“ in Lugano. And after talking with Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel about his first recording with producer Manfred Eicher, I decided to need another voice sheding some light on the special room and the producer’s input. So, I got Bley’s long-time sax player Andy Sheppard on the phone, and what he told me, was the icing on the cake, a great finish for the show.

Now this was only part of the fun. Some guys do great work, working as musician and tone engineers behind the controls to make radio sound magic. In this case bass player Markus Brown (his trio is just featured in a big Scandinavian jazz magazine) was the great man working the details: listen to the show, and you will see that it was done, let me say it this way, with love and care. In between jazz matador Karsten Mützelfeld entered the studio and offered me 20 Euros, because he couldn’t help but strictly ignore the deadline of 7 minutes and 30 seconds. This guy has great humour

The good vibes continued when we arrived at the headquarter of jazz affairs and small-taked with Harald Rehmann. It was a perfect radio day, and you really shouldn’t miss the show! There will be features on the Punkt Festival and a showcase in Trondheim. Last, not least, there are great new records by Carla Bley, Ralph Towner, Jan Bang, Nils Petter Molvaer and Arve Henriksen. Arve will perform in Dortmund’s Domicil on October 12th! I’ll be there. And Harald will record Arve at the Unterfahrt in München.